The Never-Ending Western Movie - Robert Sheckley, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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The Never-Ending Western Movie
Robert Sheckley
The name is Washburn: just plain Washburn to my friends, Mister Washburn to enemies and strangers.
Saying that I've said everything, because you've seen me a thousand times, on the big screen in your
neighborhood theater or on the little pay-tv screen in your living room, riding through Cholla cactus and
short grass, my famous derby pulled down over my eyes, my famous Colt 44 with the 7 1/2-inch barrel
strapped down to my right leg. But just now I'm riding in a big air-conditioned Cadillac, sitting between
my agent-manager Gordon Simms, and my wife, Consuela. We've turned off State Highway 101 and
we're bouncing along a rutted dirt road which will end presently at the Wells Fargo Station that marks
one of the entrances to The Set. Simms is talking rapidly and rubbing the back of my neck like I was a
fighter about to enter the ring, which is more or less the situation. Consuela is quiet. Her English isn't too
good yet. She's the prettiest little thing imaginable, my wife of less than two months, a former MissChile ,
a former actress in various Gaucho dramas filmed inBuenos Aires andMontevideo . This entire scene is
supposed to be off-camera. It's the part they never show you: the return of the famous gunfighter, all the
way from Bel Air in the jolly jittery year of 2031 to the Old West of the mid-1900's.
Simms is jabbering away about some investment he wants me to come in on, some new seabed mining
operation, another of Simms's get-richer-quick schemes, because Simms is already a wealthy man, as
who wouldn't be with a thirty-percent bit on my earnings throughout my ten biggest years as a star?
Simms is my friend, too, but I can't think about investments now because we're coming to The Set.
Consuela, sitting on my right, shivers as the famous weatherbeaten old station comes into view. She's
never really understood The Never-Ending Western Movie. InSouth America they still make their movies
in the old-fashioned way, everything staged, everything faked, and the guns fire only blanks. She can't
understand whyAmerica 's famous Movie has to be done for real when you could contrive all the effects
and nobody would get killed. I've tried to explain it to her, but it sounds ridiculous in Spanish.
It's different for me this time, of course: I'm coming out of retirement to make a cameo appearance. I'm
on a no-kill contract—famous gunman to do a comedy bit with Old Jeff Mangles and Natchez Parker.
There's no script, of course; there never is in The Movie. We'll improvise around any situation that comes
up—we, the commedia dell'arte players of the Old West. Consuela doesn't understand any of this. She's
heard about contracts to kill, but a no-kill contract is something new in her experience.
And now we've arrived. The car stops in front of a low, unpainted pinewood building. Everything on this
side of it is 21st-centuryAmerica in all its recycled and reproduced gory. On the other side is the
million-acre expanse of prairie, mountains and desert, with its thousands of concealed cameras and
microphones, that is The Set for The Never-Ending Movie.
I'm in costume already—blue jeans, blue-and-white checked shirt, boots, derby, rawhide jacket, and 3.
2 pounds of revolver. A horse is waiting for me at the hitching post of the other side of the station, with all
my gear tied aboard in a neat blanket roll. An assistant director checks me over and finds me in order: no
wristwatch or other anachronisms for the cameras to find. “All right, Mr. Washburn,” he says, “you can
go through whenever you're ready.”
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Simms gives his main-event boy a final rub on the back. He's bouncing up and down on his toes,
excited, envying me, wishing he were the one to be riding out into the desert, a tall, slow-moving man
with mild manners and sudden death always near his right hand. But Simms is short and fat and nearly
bald and he would never do, certainly not for a heroic gunman's role, so he lives it vicariously. I am
Simms's manhood, and he and I have ridden the danger trail many times and our trusty 44 had cleared
out all opposition, until we reigned supreme, the absolute best gunslinger in the West, the one who finally
retired when all the opposition was dead or lying low... Poor Simms, he always wanted us to play that
last big scene, the final definitive walkdown on some dustyMain Street . He wanted us to go out high,
wide and handsome, not for the money, we've got too much of that as it is, but just for the glory, retiring
from The Movie in a blaze of gunfire at the top of our form. I wanted it that way myself, but the
opposition got cautious, and Washburn spent a final ridiculous year in The Movie, riding around looking
for something to do, six-shooter ready, but never finding anyone who wanted to shoot it out with him.
And even this cameo appearance—for Simms it is a mockery of all that we have stood for, and I
suppose it's that way for me, too. (It is difficult to know where I start and where Simms ends, difficult to
separate what I want and what Simms wants, difficult to face this, the end of our great years in The
Movie.)
Simms shakes my hand and grips me hard on the shoulder and says nothing in that manly Western style
he's picked up through the years of associating with me, being me. Consuela hugs me, there are tears in
her eyes, she kisses me, she tells me to come back to her soon. Ah, those incredible first months with a
new wife! The splendor of it, before the dreary old reality sets in! Consuela is number four, I've ridden
down a lot of trails in my time, most of them the same, and now the director checks me again for lipstick
smears, nods okay, and I turn away from Consuela and Simms, throw them the little two-finger salute I'm
famous for, and stride across the creaking floor of the Wells Fargo Office and out the other side, into the
blazing sunshine and the world of The Never-Ending Western Movie.
From far away, the camera picks up a lone rider, moving antlike between brilliantly striped canyon walls.
We see him in successive shots against an unfolding panorama of desert scenery. Here he is in the
evening, silhouetted against a flaming sky, derby cocked jauntily on the back of his head, cooking over a
little fire. How he is asleep, rolled in his blanket, as the embers of his fire fade to ash. Before dawn the
rider is up again, making coffee, preparing for the day's ride. Sunrise finds him mounted and moving,
shielding his eyes from the sun, leaning back long in the stirrups, letting his horse pick its own way over
the rocky slopes.
I am also the audience watching me the actor, as well as the actor watching me the audience. It is the
dream of childhood come true: to play a part and also watch ourselves play it. I know now that we never
stop acting, never stop watching ourselves act. It is merely an irony of fate that the heroic images I see
coincide with what you, sitting in front of your little screen, also see.
Now the rider has climbed to a high saddleback between two mountains. It is cold up here, a high wind
is blowing, the rider's coat collar is turned up and is derby is tied in place with a bright wool scarf.
Looking over the man's shoulder, far below, we see a settlement, tiny and lost in the immensity of the
landscape. We follow as the rider clucks to his tired horse and begins the journey down to the settlement.
The derbied rider is walking his horse through the settlement of Comanche. There is one street—Main
Street—with its saloon, boarding house, livery stable, blacksmith's, general store, all as quaint and stark
as a Civil War daguerreotype. The desert wind blows unceasingly through the town, and a find dust is
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settled over everything.
The rider is recognized. Loungers in front of the general store say: “Hey, it's Washburn!”
I dismount stiffly in front of the livery stable—a tall, travel-stained man, gun belt worn low and strapped
down, the cracked horn-faced gun butt standing out easy to reach, easy to see. I turn and rub my
face—the famous, long, sorrowful face, the puckered scar along one cheekbone, the narrow unblinking
gray eyes. It is the face of a tough, dangerous, unpredictable man; yet a sympathetic one. It is me
watching you watching me.
I come out of the livery stable, and there to greet me is Sheriff Ben Watson, an old friend, hard tanned
face and black handlebar mustache, tin star gleaming on his worsted vest.
“Heard you might be coming through,” Watson says. “Heard you been to Californee for a spell.”
“Californee” is our own special code word for retirement.
“That's so,” I say. “How's everything around here?”
“So-so,” Watson tells me. “I don't suppose you heard about Old Jeff Mangles?”
I wait. The sheriff says, “Happened just yesterday. Old Jeff got thrown, out on the desert. We figure his
horse shied at a rattler—Christ knows that I told him to sell that big skittery wall-eyed brute. But you
know Old Jeff…”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“Well, like I say, he got thrown and dragged. He was dead before Jimmy Conners found him.”
Long silence. I push the derby to the back of my head. Finally I say, “Okay, Ben, what else do you want
to tell me?”
The sheriff is ill at ease. He fidgets, shifting from one foot to the other. I wait. Jeff Mangles dead; that
blows the scene I was hired to play. What other development is coming up?
Watson says, “You must be thirsty. What say we put down a beer…”
“Just tell me the news.”
“Well... You ever hear of a cowpuncher from the Panhandle name of Little Joe Potter?”
I shake my head.
“He came drifting up this way a while ago, bringing with him quite a reputation as a fast gun. Didn't you
hear about the shootout down atTwin Peaks ?”
Now that he mentions it, I do remember hearing something about it. Bit I've been out to Californee doing
other things, and shootouts just didn't interest me much until right now.
“This Little Joe Potter,” Watson goes on, “he went up against four X-Bar riders in a dispute over some
woman. The say it was quite a fight. The result was that Little Joe blew them four riders all to hell, and he
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picked himself up quite a reputation thereby.”
“So what?” I ask.
“Well, some time after that, Little Joe was in a poker game with some boys down Gila Bend way...”
Watson stops, uncomfortable. “Washburn, maybe you better get the story from Charlie Gibbs, since he
spoke to a man who was actually present at that game. Yeah, you better hear it from Charlie. See you
later, Washburn.”
The sheriff moves away, following The Movie dictum of keeping the talk-scenes short and letting other
people have a piece of the action.
I walk to the saloon. There is someone following me, a kid, no more than eighteen or nineteen, a
gangling snubnosed freckled kid in too-short overalls and cracked boots. He wears a gun. What does he
want of me? What everyone else wants, I suppose.
I enter the saloon, my spurs clattering on the plank floor. Charlie Gibbs is drinking at the bar, a fat
sloppy man all grin and crinkle, not wearing a gun because Charlie Gibbs is a comic character and
therefore does not kill or get killed. Charlie is also our local Screen Actors' Guild representative.
I buy him a drink and ask him about Little Joe Potter's famous poker game.
“I heard about it from Texas Jim Claire. You remember Texas Jim, don't you Washburn? Good old boy
who works for the Donaldson outfit as a wrangler? Well, sir, Texas Jim was in this poker game over by
way of the Gila Bend. The action commenced to get hot. There was this one big jackpot at the end, and
Doc Dailey bet a thousand dollars Mex on his hand. Little Joe was right fond of the cards he was
holding, but he didn't have no more money to back hisself with. Doc said he'd take collateral, if Little Joe
could think of any. Little Joe thought about it for a while, and then he said, 'How much would you give
me for Mr. Washburn's derby?' There was a silence then, because nobody just walks up and takes away
Mr. Washburn's derby, not without first killing the man underneath it. But on the other hand, Little Joe
was not known as a braggart, and he'd handled hisself well during that shootout with the X-Bar riders.
So Doc, he thought about it a while, then he said,
‘Sure, Joe, I'll allow you a thousand for a ringside seat when you got to take it off him.’ ‘You can have
that ringside seat for nothing,’ says Little Joe, ‘if I lose this hand, which I'm not fixing to do.’ So the bet is
accepted and they show down. Little Joe's four eights lose to Doc's four Jacks. Little Joe rises and
stretches, and says, 'Well, Doc, looks like you're going to get your ringside seat after all.’”
Charlie finishes off his drink and looks at me with bright, malicious eyes. I nod, finish my own drink, and
go out back to the outhouse.
The outhouse is a designated off-camera area. We use it for talks which are necessary, but are out of
our Western context. Charlie Gibbs comes out a few minutes later. He turns on the hidden air
conditioning, takes a pack of cigarettes from behind a beam, lights up, sits down and makes himself
comfortable. As SAG representative, Charlie spends a fair amount of time out here listening to gripes and
grievances. This is his office, and he's tried to make it pleasant for himself.
Charlie says, “I suppose you want to know what's going on?”
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“Damned right I do,” I tell him. “What is this crap about Joe Potter coming to take away my derby?”
“Don't get excited,” Charlie says, “everything is in order. Potter is a new star on his way up. After Jeff
Mangles got killed, it was natural to match up you and him. Potter went along with it. Your agent was
approached yesterday and he renegotiated your contract. You're getting a hell of a bonus for this
shootout appearance.”
“Simms renegotiated my contract? Without asking me first?”
“You weren't available then. Simms said it would be fine with you. He gave a statement to the
newspapers about how you and he had talked about this many times, and that it had always been your
desire to leave The Movie big, at the top of your firm, in one last shootout. He said he didn't have to
discuss it with your because you and he hand talked it over many times and you and he were closer than
brothers. He said he was glad this chance had come up, and he knew you would be glad, too.”
“Christ! That simple-minded Simms!”
“Was he setting you up?” Charlie asks.
“No, it's not like hat at all. We did talk a lot about a final showdown. I did tell him that I'd like to end
big…”
“But it was just talk?” Charlie suggests.
“Not exactly.” But it's one thing to talk about a shootout when you're retired and save in your house in
Bel Air. It's another to suddenly find yourself involved in a fight without preparation. “Simms didn't set me
up; but he did involve me in something that I'd want to make up my own mind about.”
“So the situation is,” Charlie says, “that you were a fool for shooting off your mouth about wanting a final
match, and your agent was a fool for taking you at your word.”
“That's the way it looks.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I'll tell you,” I say, “as long as I've talking to my old buddy Charlie, and not to Gibbs the SAG
representative.”
“Sure,” Charlie says.
“I'm going to waltz on out of here,” I say. “I'm thirty-seven years old and I haven't practiced gunplay for
a year. I've got a new wife…”
“You don't have to go into all that,” Gibbs says. “Life is sweet, that says it all. As your friend, I approve.
As your SAG representative, I cant tell you that the Guild won't back you up if you break a valid
contract made by your legally appointed representative. If The Company sues you, you're all alone on
your lonesome.”
“Better all alone than underground with company,” I tell him. “How good is this Little Joe?”
“He's good. But not as good as you are, Washburn. You're the best I ever seen. You thinking about
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